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Senate GOP seeks to divide Dems

With the Department of Homeland Security standoff in the rearview mirror, Senate Republicans are going on offense with proposals that divide Democrats such as an Iran oversight bill and trade legislation.

Senate Republicans are desperate to show they can govern after they largely wasted February haggling over a DHS funding bill without winning any of the concessions they hoped for on immigration.

After battling among themselves for weeks, Republicans now want to put Democrats on the defensive by pushing issues that split Democratic centrists and liberals.

“Over here they better be careful and not try to jam things here, because you could run into the same problem, because there’s a group of people who don’t like the trade thing. Is it a majority of Democrats? Probably,” Reid told The Wall Street Journal.

McConnell used the wedge strategy successfully with the first issue out of the gate in January, the Keystone XL pipeline. The Senate passed a measure approving the project with nine Democratic votes, sending it to Obama’s desk.

The president vetoed the Keystone bill, and the Senate failed to override him last week.

Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, says the overarching goal is not to divide Democrats but instead to break the legislative logjam that stifled the chamber during four years of Democratic control.

“We actually want to pass legislation. We don’t want to have show votes. Last Congress was about making a point. This Congress about passing things,” he said.

Some Republicans are worried their party has squandered the first 60 days of the session by becoming bogged down in an intraparty fight over immigration and Homeland Security funding.

“The clock is ticking already. We’re eating up a lot of time going nowhere. That’s the problem,” he added.

McConnell plans to move several relatively bipartisan initiatives in the next few weeks to put legislative points on the board.

This week he will move a bill to fight human trafficking with strong bipartisan support. It passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously.

The GOP leader also wants fast action on a bipartisan cybersecurity bill. But that measure could also divide Democrats, with the White House and some Democratic senators expressing concerns about privacy.

The biggest lift before the Easter Recess, however, is the budget resolution Senate Republicans hope to pass before the end of the month.

“I’m talking to committee members about specific problems on it, trying to make sure we have support and we’ve covered all the problems,” he told reporters, noting that he and Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the chairman of the House Budget panel, have held weekly meetings.

One of the major decisions that has yet to be made is how to use the special budgetary protection known as reconciliation, which would allow Republicans to pass a deficit-reducing measure with a simple majority vote.

Conservatives are pressing for a full repeal of ObamaCare through reconciliation, but other Republicans would like to see it used for tax and entitlement reform.

A senior Budget panel Republican said the strategy for budgetary reconciliation “is uncertain at this time.”

“I talked to Bob Goodlatte as we were walking to the chamber for the [Benjamin] Netanyahu speech saying, we’ve got to get back together again,” he said, voicing frustration with the weeklong impasse over DHS funding.

“It certainly held up things in the Senate. I didn’t like to see it,” he said.

Republicans have a short window in which to rack up legislative accomplishments before 2016 presidential politics intrude.

Their path forward is complicated by a looming series of deadlines that are likely to spark controversy.

A one-year patch intended to freeze scheduled cuts to doctors’ payments will expire on March 31.

The Highway Trust Fund runs out of money on May 31.

And the federal debt limit — an issue that brought Congress to a standstill in 2011 and 2013 — will need to be raised by October or November, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Amongst these deadlines, Republicans will have to find time to advance two of their biggest priorities: a replacement for ObamaCare, which will become more pressing if the Supreme Court strikes down the federal healthcare exchanges in 34 states, and tax reform.

A senior Senate Republican aide said both initiatives are wending their way through the committee process. The aide predicted healthcare legislation will remain under wraps until closer to when the Supreme Court is expected to rule in King v. Burwell. The case could strip healthcare subsidies from 7 million to 8 million people.